OBay Shelties in Scotland!

Well we have just returned from our trip up to the Scottish borders. While we had a good time things were slightly dampened by the rain and the resulting mud. It is hard to believe it is July!

Starting our week we drove up to Bakewell for a stopover before the last part of the journey up to Scotland. We stopped at a really nice Caravan Club site called Chatsworth Park that was part of a large manor house and deer park. There was good walking for the dogs and a few pubs within walking distance. The walk to the pub that night was great but unfortunately the pub recommended by the site wardens was awful! This food goes on our list as just about the worst food we have eaten in a restaurant. Dennis has decided that if the pub says "families welcome" that means the food is really really bad! The caravan site had really posh shower blocks and that always makes me happy. I am really easy to please...really.

We got up to the Kelso site for the Scottish show on Friday and set up in a nice location. The site was great and was within walking distance to the pretty little town of Kelso. The site was located at Springwood park and, again, had great shower blocks! There was a little indication of the possible mud situation right from the beginning but we just drove up 10 hours and were not going to turn back now.

Upon awakening Saturday morning the rain started and just never stopped. I think it rained non-stop for two days. You thought Supadgogs was muddy? Ha! I must have gone thru a new pair of socks every hour and had mud caked running trousers. We tried really hard to keep the NEW caravan clean and therefore went thru tons of towels drying the dogs and cleaning their feet. I am so glad we left Jordan and Hob-b home with Lisa and Tony. THREE muddy wet dogs in a caravan was plenty!

This shows the walkways between the rings. Boy was that mud slippery.

Please note THESE ARE NOT MY LEGS! But Dennis thought it was quite funny as it showed how awful the mud was kicking up.

Scottish shows seem to be very different from agility shows down south. (well to be fair I can't label ALL Scottish shows..I can really just comment on this one). Strange things like:

• The running orders had no indication of numbers of dogs in the class! To this day I don't really know how many dogs were in our class. I guesstimate around 60-80.


• They don't have calling sheets to check you in. They just give you your scribe sheet when you ask and then you hold it while you queue and queue and queue. Oh and believe me scribe sheets do disintegrate in the rain. (did I mention rain?)


• The don't have a score table and therefore you do not see your times or faults or know if you placed; you just have to wait until the end.(One good thing is that whenthey post the results later on so you can see your times compared with others that placed.)

After the 2 day show we stayed on at the site to hopefully do some sightseeing and walking. Also included was 2 hours a day of training with a scottish handler named Peter Elms and some friendly competition at night. But more about that later!

Enjoy this video. Please note that although I am not the most graceful handler in the best of circumstances... I was running even worse than ever due to the mud! No comments on my gracelessness please! The dogs had some really good runs over the weekend but not all were videoed due to the rain. So here are just three jumping runs from the weekend. Note the simplicity of the courses which also was very dissapointing as I thought Scottish courses were supposed to be harder!